It’s currently dinner time, and while it is hard for me to eat food – I’m sipping a fresh ginger – lemongrass tea as I wait for the godawful live music at this restaurant to end. What brings me here is the fact that I can hear the ocean, it’s dark here, but I can still see the whitewater of the waves come in, and hear it crashing. If it was daylight here, I would be facing across the giant volcanic mount Agung – and this is a minute away from the place I’m staying which costs me under 25$ a night.

I am alone here, alone in this restaurant, and in my room. There aren’t many people on this island, there are no hostels near the place I’m freediving. I haven’t explored the island of Nusa Penida much since I’m a tiny bit afraid of renting a scooter around this island, but I tell myself it’s because I’m too tired from freediving.

I don’t like the fact that I’m complaining. I’m on yet another solo trip, one month with one backpack around Indonesia, and some acid reflux of all things that’s trying to ruin it for me. It’s the most annoying of health issues, it’s not big enough to make me stop doing the things I came here for, but having a constant burn in my throat is really fucking annoying. It’s such a minor issue but it still annoys me, and It annoys me that I’m letting myself be annoyed by it while I’m practically in paradise. It sort of feels as if a robber came to your perfect house and stole a single shoe. I am feeling better now though, better enough to write again – but that doesn’t change the fact that I spent the better part of these last few days asleep. I say aloud that the reason I came here was to learn how to freedive. And that is still partly true. That’s the only thing I’m doing right now other than eating the little bit that I can and sleeping. While the freediving part is still fun, the rest of what I’m doing here feels a but empty. A bit lonely I dare say. But in both freediving, and the rest of my trip solo travelling – what I’m really relying on and facing is myself.

I think people outside the sport look at freediving as being a sort of an extreme sport – where people get a giant adrenaline rush from being down that deep. But that is far from the truth. Adrenaline is far from what you want, you want your heart rate to be slow. You want to conserve your energy, you want to be moving down deep, but also still. You listen to your body as every part of your body is telling you to take a breath. Your diaphragm begins to convulse trying to force you to breathe, but you need to calm yourself down and remind yourself that you still have 60% of your oxygen supply remaining. It turns out that while your body has all of these things that could get you to panic, it also has things going on that help you stay underwater….almost as if you were meant to be there. As your face touches the colder water and the pressure rises, the Mammalian dive reflex kicks in. Your heart rate slows down, your blood is diverted more towards the vital organs, your spleen ejects out more red blood cells increasing the oxygen capacity of your blood, and when you get deep enough, your blood surrounds your lungs to help it handle the pressure better. Once you reach a certain depth, the weight of the water above you is enough to counter your buoyancy – and now you float as if you’re in space. Go deeper, and you don’t need to fin anymore since the ocean helps you move down. It all depends on the way you decide to look at it. Your attitude, your mindset. To some people, freediving can be scary – and I get it – but for some reason I and many others are still attracted to this sport. There’s an aspect of freedom, not encumbered by the heft of scuba equipment. The gear is cheaper, it’s easier to move around with. You feel cooler than the scuba divers being able to dive as deep as them even without any additional air. There’s the aspect of being able to get closer to animals. Bubbles can sometimes scare marine life away. Without bubbles, you look like a weird fish – the animals are more curious now. Whale mothers send their curious cubs towards you so that they can get a better look at you. Then there’s the mental aspect. You can’t be a good freediver if your head isn’t in the right place. In fact, the first session of the course introduces you to mindfulness techniques. One of the best ways to become a better freediver? Meditation and Yoga.

At the beginning of my open water session – I’m annoyed. I’m annoyed that my stomach still hurts. I’m annoyed that my wetsuit feels both too tight and loose. I’m annoyed that the water is choppy. Annoyed that my snorkel isn’t long enough and that water still gets in as I float. I’m annoyed that I have to wait 12-15 minutes sometimes for my turn. I’m annoyed that the left eye of my mask keeps fogging up. I’m still annoyed by the god awful music last night since I can here it in my room as I try and sleep. I’m extra annoyed because there’s another live music band on the other side of my room playing even more god awful live music. But as I prepare for my dive, I begin to change my mind. I clear my mask and snorkel. I take slow, heavy breaths. I close my eyes for a bit as I practice scanning my body, releasing any tension I find. Instead of being bothered by the water swaying me, I sway with the water. I remind myself how lucky I am to be here, back at the ocean. I open my eyes and stare down below at the open blue, extending past the end of my dive line towards infinity. I take my final breath, remove my snorkel, and make my dive.

I’m not looking at where I’m going. My eyes are parallel to the line, I watch as the braids of the rope whiz by me as I move further below. I rapidly equalize my ears using a technique I didn’t know existed through my years as a scuba diver. I have long legs, and long fins – so I go down fast, and before I know it – I reach the end – this is 15 meters for me now, I wouldn’t have made it here if I was looking at where I was going. The dive isn’t over yet, I turn around and swim back to the surface – again not looking at where I’m going. The light begins to become brighter, and I pop out to the surface and finally breathe again. I’m smiling now. For a brief moment in time – despite the discomfort – my mind was still. This is why I pursue this sport. There are tremendous opportunities for discomfort. Tremendous opportunities to be anxious. Your diaphragm begins to convulse, rapidly and with force. If you don’t equalize fast enough on the descent, your eardrums will rupture. For every 10 meters you go down, the pressure doubles, and the volume of your lungs decreases by a half. If you push past your limits, you can blackout underwater. You need to quiet those anxieties down, to quiet the things bothering you. Picking them out like weeds in a garden, like removing the little bits of trash you find floating in the ocean – replacing it with the clear blue that’s there naturally. I can feel the effects of my dive when I’m on the surface. I now see that I’m in between two gorgeous green islands in the middle of the sea – one of them with a giant volcano poking out the top. The sun shines on my face, I float with the ocean, my stomach doesn’t bother me as much anymore. At night, even the live music has become more bearable, and in the mornings – I now notice the sweet sounds of the singing birds as I wake up. I’m done with my freediving course now, my acid reflux has gone – but I didn’t complete my course. Some force decided to serve me with a second round of annoying illnesses – sinus issues – the illness divers fear, preventing me from going down more than 2 meters without my forehead feeling like it’s going to implode. I should be extremely bothered – especially since this is the second time I’ve attempted this course only to be stopped by the same issue – but I’m not. I don’t know when my sinus issues will go away. I spend most of my free time watching the waves roll in. The tide’s higher now and sometimes the waves crash hard enough to fly up in the air and rain down on me. It makes me smile, as if the ocean knows that I can’t go in so it tries to come to me.I could look at whatever is happening as a bad thing, as if I’m trip is screwed, but that would be the wrong attitude. Your experience travelling is largely determined by the attitude you take towards your experiences.All things considered, I love the fact that I’m travelling solo. By many accounts, I am in paradise. My plans are no plans. I literally have no idea where I’m going tomorrow even though I’m supposed to leave my hotel by noon. It does get alone sometimes travelling solo, but I could go to a hostel and quickly meet a bunch of open and like-minded travellers. I could also decide to book a nice hotel room somewhere and spend 3 days pampering myself at a spa, getting massages everyday. I could decide to get surf lessons and get beaten down by waves. I could decide to go to another place entirely, moving further inland into Indonesia to sample all the different kinds of local food I can find. I could go decide to find a way up to mount Merapi and see the lava from one of the most active volcanoes up close. I have no idea what’s coming, and that’s completely okay.I’m only at the beginning of my trip, and my life for that matter, and there’s still so much good in the present and in the future. I don’t know this for sure, the future is unknown after all – but there are two ways of looking at the unknown. With fear, or with reverence. I don’t know what’s coming, or what I’m going to find – but at the same time I have no idea what’s coming, or what I’m going to find 🙂 . Some doors may close, but that makes you look at all the other doors that are there to open.I also don’t know if I would spend this much time writing if it wasn’t for whatever is happening. I usually come to writing when things are difficult, getting things on to a page stops the whirlwind in my head, and makes it make sense to me in some way. I feel calmer, more at peace, and I understand myself better – and if I get to express myself through this in some way to you, that makes it all the better.I feel a bit conflicted about posting things pictures and videos from my trip on instagram. The true experiences of my travels disguised and hidden by pretty pictures that people look at for a few seconds before looking at someone else’s disguised travel pictures. Instead of feeling more socially connected, I feel ever so slightly more socially alienated. But we still are social creatures, we crave connection, and I do want to share more with you, and I do want to hear more from you.So this is a different way of sharing my trip, the whirlwind of thoughts in my head now down on a page for you to read. If you made it this far, I want to sincerely thank you for taking the time to read this.

That’s all for now,

Lot’s of Love,

Nikhil